Abstract

This study examines how elemental imagery of mist, mountain, and ice functions as oracular symbols across bilingual poetics. Drawing on English and Japanese versions of three paired poems, the analysis shows how silence and geometry become central devices that mediate between universal metaphors and culturally embedded cosmologies. The English texts emphasize mystical abstraction, vertical ascent, and paradoxical silence, while the Japanese texts foreground ritual divination, circular continuity, and geometric enclosure. Methods of incorporating the discussion within the scope of Comparative Literature, Translation Studies, Cultural Studies, and Environmental Humanities, the article illustrates how more generalized concepts within bilingual poetics might explain cultural and ecological ideas. By incorporating a methodology of reading with an interdisciplinary focus, it relates to an ethics of difference as articulated in Venuti. The findings reveal four thematic currents of silence as oracle, cosmic geometry, cross‑linguistic resonance, and ecological continuity. Together these currents show how literature bridges nature and transcendence while reflecting distinct cultural sensibilities. The study concludes that bilingual poetry offers a powerful lens for understanding how universal metaphors are reshaped through translation, ritual, and environmental imagination.